Military Plane crash kills 15 people on board

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DUBAI: A Boeing 707 military cargo plane crashed in bad weather on Monday west of the Iranian capital, killing 15 out of the 16 people on board, the Iranian army said.

A flight engineer survived and was taken to hospital, the army said in a statement carried by the semi-official Fars news agency. The aircraft’s black box – a cockpit voice recorder (CVR) – had been recovered at the crash site, Fars said.

The plane went down near Fath airport, which belongs to Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards Corps and is located near Karaj in the central Iranian province of Alborz.

“A Boeing cargo 707 place carrying meat from Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan had an emergency landing at Fath airport today … the flight engineer has been dispatched to the hospital,” the army said in the statement.

“It exited the runway during the landing and caught fire after hitting the wall at the end of the runway,” it said.

An army spokesman, Shahin Taghikhani, told state TV that the plane belonged to Iran and that all on board were Iranian citizens. The army’s statement came after conflicting reports over who owned the plane.